Only 5 More Days!Did you know that all ETFO TVOT members with member accounts at the TVOT Local Website are eligible to receive up to $50 per year to assist with the purchase of books related to their elementary teaching needs?
Applications must be received by May 31st so act quickly if you are interested.
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More Spaces Added - Paid PD Session Repeated Thank you to our ETFO Presenter who has agreed to on take additional participants for the after school session - "Fun and Inclusive Health and Physical Education While Teaching Virtually".
This workshop will be held from 4:30-7:30 PM on June 3rd with registration via the TVDSB Employee Portal. This is a paid PD event so participation counts as a half day of teaching for daily OTs or those in a LTO of .5 or less.
Further details are available in the Portal under the heading "Conference Session Registration" > "Elementary Occasional Teacher PD 2020-2021."
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TVOT Executive for 2021-2022
As determined at the TVOT Spring General Meeting:
- President and Chief Negotiator - Terry Card
- First Vice-President - Kevin Utley
- Second Vice-President - Vivek Nath
- Treasurer - Sean Cousins
- Secretary - Sharon Pinylo
- Health and Safety Officer - David Griffith
- Executive Members at Large - Farida Makhani, Krisanne Nunes, Nancy Springer, Cindy Webb
Congratulations!
We look forward to serving the needs of our membership.
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What you should know about "Defamatory Websites and Social Networking Pages" from ETFO Provincial PRS
Many websites offer social networking services and/or act as public message boards that cater specifically to students. Some of these websites, such as www.ratemyteacher.com, encourage students to comment publicly about the teachers in their school.
These websites do not monitor or filter the content or comments posted by the students that use them. Further, these services offer students a level of anonymity that may lead to a diminished sense of culpability. The result is that some of the comments and/or content posted on these websites is rude, hurtful, and even defamatory.
Historically, when a person was the subject of an offensive and/or defamatory publication, that person could sue the publisher and the author of the defamatory content. Today, the Internet has added a new level of complexity to this course of action. Many websites are run from servers located outside of Canada and the operators can be very difficult to locate. Nevertheless, victims of offensive or defamatory postings have avenues of recourse aside from civil litigation.
Most reputable websites and social networking services, such as Facebook and MySpace, have policies in place to ensure that any offensive or defamatory postings can be removed as soon as they are brought to the attention of the service operators. Postings on other websites, like ratemyteacher.com, can be more difficult to remove. This type of website actively encourages students to post comments about their teachers and their policies state that they will remove comments only in extreme cases. Also, www.ratemyteacher.com does not offer an easy to use content removal procedure. However, despite these variances between website policies, it is generally understood that offensive or defamatory content should be removed once discovered and brought to the attention of the appropriate managers.
Even though offensive content may be removed from these websites once discovered, this does not mean that it is expunged from the Internet. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, store snapshots of billions of websites in their databases to provide fast search results. Consequently, offensive content from these websites may get caught and stored in these databases. As a practical matter, search engines must also be contacted directly in order to have all of the offending content removed from the Internet.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Monitor your online reputation. Action can be taken quickly to remove the offending content. Also, be mindful of your “online footprint” and carefully consider the information and pictures you post on the Internet so that you can minimize the chances that someone will use your own information and/or pictures to harass you.
Periodically search your own name in various search engines to ensure nothing offensive or defamatory is posted on some or all of the following websites:
• www.google.com
• www.yahoo.com
• www.msn.com
• www.search.com
• www.live.com
• www.webcrawler.com (this searches several different services at once)
• www.ratemyteacher.com
• www.youtube.com
• www.flickr.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.myspace.com
If you find something offensive and/or potentially defamatory, note the date, time, and web address (i.e. http://www.ratemyteacher.com/school/teacher/...) of the offending web page, along with any other potentially useful information.
Contact your ETFO local president or staff in PRS for additional advice.
Protect your “online footprint” by minimizing the amount of personal information you publish about yourself on the Internet:
• check your privacy settings on Facebook, MySpace, MSN Messenger or any other similar service that you use to ensure your page can be accessed by only those whom you have invited;
• DO NOT invite or add students to your Facebook, MySpace, MSN Messenger, or similar service;
• review the pictures of yourself posted on the Internet; if you do not want your students or employer to see a certain picture or series of pictures, have them removed;
• minimize the amount of personal information you give to various online services; ask yourself, “do I need to give my friend list / phone number / e-mail address to this service?”;
• consider creating a separate online e-mail account through Hotmail or Gmail or a similar service with minimal personal information specifically for using online services without giving out your personal e-mail and/or address information.
For further information contact your local ETFO president or Professional Relations staff in Protective Services at 416-962-3836 or 1-888-838-3836.
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2020 - 2021 OTE Required TrainingAll TVOT members (daily OTs and LTOs) must complete the 15 mandatory training modules listed in the TVDSB Emloyee Portal by June 29, 2021. Be sure to check off the module and hit the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page after each one. If the checkmark is there the next time you log into the Portal, then your completion has been recorded. For daily OTs and those in LTOs of .5 or less, completion counts for all purposes as a half day of work.
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Welcome to the new Survive and Thrive!
Survive & Thrive is a website designed to be an easily accessible resource for beginning Teachers, Occasional Teachers, mentors and Teacher candidates. Here you will find hands-on information that is of value in the classroom, in dealing with colleagues and with parents. Check out the hundreds of practical resources on topics such as classroom management, special needs students and reporting. This is site is just one of several sites supporting Teachers sponsored by the Ontario Teachers' Federation/OTF.
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